Performance Designer Rosie Elnile (costume designer for The American Clock at The Old Vic, pictured above) shares her top tips on how to work with design or how to work with a designer.
One
Think about the sustainability practices that you are engaging with, and how you are engaging with them at the inception of your design, rather than adding them in at the end when everything’s been decided.
For example, I’m really interested in working with found and secondhand objects as part of coming up with the idea for the design. I often think that looking around the world and seeing what is available to you, finding objects and materials that have a history or a trace of life in them, can be more conceptually and aesthetically exciting than, for example, taking some plywood and scenically painting it to look like a material that it’s not. Also, inevitably that plywood and that paint will end up in the bin at the end of the process, or in a skip, so maybe by working with found materials we can think about our work as happening in a more circular economy where they have a use before the show and they have a use after the show. I think what’s really important is to try and think about sustainability in a way that gives you aesthetic and conceptual gains rather than thinking of them as losses.
Two
What is the community or the environment around the theatre that you’re making in? Remember that you’re not making in a void and not only the building but also the surrounding area has a history and people living there.
What kind of visual inspiration or materials might you find just by walking around the borough, town or city that your theatre is in? Why don’t you and the designer you’re working with, or you the designer, take a day or half a day thinking about your production while walking around the area that the theatre’s in. I would argue that that is important if you’re doing a Renaissance play or a piece of new writing. I think it’s important to try and aesthetically engage with the world as it is right now, and the place that you’re making in.
Three
Design is powerful and political and deserves to be treated with rigour and care.
If your show is set in a culture or a place that you have no experience of or history with, how are you researching the aesthetics of your production, and in what way might the way your production looks reinforce or subvert stereotypes? It’s your responsibility to make sure that you are as rigorous about this as you possibly can be, and also remember that maybe you’re not the right person to decide on the aesthetic world of that production.
Or, if your production is influenced by a movement in art history or a particular artistic style, what is the history of that artistic style? How did those aesthetics come to exist? Most art movements and most architectural movements have a politics to them – be rigorous about this and find out what those politics are.
Image credit: Manuel Harlan, The American Clock, 2019
